The Best Way to Carry Your Cards When Getting Autographs

byMatt RaymondonApril 26, 2011

With spring in bloom, you’re planning a trip to the ballpark. You will arrive early for the best chance to graph the players upon their arrival or during warm-ups. You’ve sifted through your card collection, setting aside players for both teams. You’ve prepped your cards. Your Sharpie is flowing well.

There’s just one problem.

During the last trip to the park, you missed a couple players because you couldn’t flip through your stack in time to find their cards. Oh, and there was that incident last year when someone bumped you, spilling your cards to the ground. Picking the peanut shells off wasn’t much fun.

So, how do you carry your cards securely while still allowing quick access at a moment’s notice? It’s easy with a couple inexpensive items from an art supply store.

The only thing I would suggest would be to use only two photocorners per card instead of four. I usually put photocorners in the lower right and upper left corners of the card, and it secures the card well and is easier to get cards in and out when you replace cards. Also you will only need half as many photocorners so it will be a little cheaper.

I’ve used the photo corner method for awhile (2 corners per card, 4 corners per 3×5 or 4×6), though I have employed a more hybrid approach. I take normal cardstock pages and set them up as illustrated above, then 3-hole punch them and put them into a binder. This allows me to easily switch pages around and also include other items (8x10s, magazines) in regular plastic sleeves within the same binder.

I like to use the pads with the wire binding on the top of the pad. If you have say the wires down the left side & get a player who is a lefty sometimes you’ll get a sub-par graph or the player might skip the first card all together if you have multiples.

The two items listed to purchase through Amazon did not work for me. I found the cards were getting damaged on the corners by the photo corners. Also when carrying the book the cards fell out. This method did not work for me. I am going to try trading card sheets as that worked for me in my youth.